The television no longer has the undivided attention of a growing proportion of British viewers, judging by the 62% of UK internet users who say they use their smartphone or tablet while watching TV.

Many of those second-screeners are using social networks like Facebook and Twitter, with both companies keen to capitalise on the trend, and encourage broadcasters and brands to do more to engage audiences on the services.

Among the findings published on Trendrr's blog are the claim that "the volume of Facebook user engagement relating to television programming was 5 times as large as all other social networks combined" – a clear shot across Twitter's bows.

The US-focused research claims that drama and comedy TV shows were particularly popular on Facebook, but live events saw "dramatically higher levels of activity over other social networks — something that may be surprising for some marketers who view Facebook as a platform mostly for extended conversation".

Trendrr says it is planning to work on further research with Facebook, including possibly integrating its data into the startup's Social TV Rankings charts, and helping broadcasters and brands to measure the conversation around their shows and advertisements, and compare it to engagement elsewhere.

The service aims to help brands synchronise their paid-for "promoted" tweets with ads airing on TV, including targeting those tweets at people who've been tweeting about the show during which they aired, and who thus will be likely to have seen the ad.

Twitter's TV Ads dashboard now has more analytics for brands

"The results of the beta test reveal that the impact of using Twitter in combination with TV advertising is significantly greater than that of using TV advertising alone," claimed Bluefin Labs founder Michael Fleischman, now working at Twitter in a product role.

"In our tests over the last few months with brands like Adidas, Holiday Inn Express, Jaguar, and Samsung, advertisers using TV ad targeting saw significant improvements to key brand metrics, such as message association and purchase intent."

Twitter is also launching a new set of analytics in its TV Ads dashboard for brands, helping them to examine in greater depth what Twitter users are saying about their advertisements.

Both Facebook and Twitter have been heavily courting the TV and advertising industries in recent years, pitching the merits of their platforms.

For example, in April at the MIPTV conference, Twitter's UK head of broadcast partnerships Dan Biddle claimed that "40% of tweets in the UK during peak-time television hours are about television", and advised broadcasters to "think about programming Twitter as you programme your channel."